Google Releases Hangouts Plugin For Microsoft Outlook

Google has today released the Hangouts plugin for Microsoft Outlook. With this plugin, you can now schedule meetings and join Hangouts video calls from Microsoft Outlook. Schedule a Hangouts video call with other Outlook users in your company with a single click. Join a scheduled Hangouts video call by opening the meeting in Outlook and clicking the Hangouts video call link.

Google Apps for Business users can schedule Hangouts video calls with other Outlook users in their company with the Hangouts Plugin for Microsoft Outlook®.

This plugin is also used by Chromebox for meetings organizations that do not have Google Apps for Business. The plugin adds a video call name to the Microsoft Outlook event, and participants join the video call from a Chromebox for meetings device by entering the video call name using the remote control.

This appears to be aimed at competing with Skype. I’d really like to see Google spend some time making good apps for Windows 8.1 and WP8.1 like Youtube and Gmail, and Google Maps. Nobody I know uses hangouts for anything.